Encapsulation of moisture and oxygen sensitive devices is an important part of manufacturing Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. It has been shown that laser assisted frit sealing of OLEDs between two display glass plates, which have a moderate coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of about 30-40×10−7° C.−1 that are separated by a frit, is feasible at a high speed up to 20-50 mm/s. The relatively high sealing speed up to 20-50 mm/s is an important requirement for enabling a cost efficient manufacturing process. This laser assisted frit sealing process has been described in co-assigned U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0128966 entitled “Method of Encapsulating a Display Element” and co-assigned U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0128967 entitled “Method of Making a Glass Envelope”. The contents of these two documents are hereby incorporated by reference herein.
However, in applications that are different than display applications, such as solid state lighting or solar cells, where reducing the cost of the materials is much more important, the use of display quality glass is a limiting factor. Thus, the manufacturers prefer to use cheaper glass plates in these types of applications, such as soda lime glass plates. But, the CTE for these types of glass plates is much higher, ˜80-90×10−7° C.−1. The problem is what changes to the sealing process and/or the frit properties are needed to enable the laser assisted frit sealing of high CTE glass plates to make glass packages that can be used in applications such as solid state lighting or solar cells, for example. Another problem that should be addressed is what changes to the sealing process and/or the frit properties are needed to enable high speed laser assisted frit sealing of high CTE glass plates. These problems and other problems are satisfied by the present invention.